Tuesday, August 06, 2013

A right-wing "news organization," CNS News, recently attempted to confront Morris Dees, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center, in an attempt to yet again exploit the awful shooting which happened last year at the headquarters of the Family Research Council.
Last August, 28-year-old Floyd Corkins attempted a mass shooting at FRC headquarters. Corkins was armed with handgun, a box of ammunition and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches. He was stopped by a security guard who suffered minor injuries.

Since the time of the shooting, FRC has blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center for Corkins' actions. SPLC had labeled FRC and several religious right organizations as hate groups due to the inaccurate things they have said about the lgbt community, including the claim gay men molest children at a high level.

FRC president Tony Perkins said the Southern Poverty Law Center had
given Corkins a "license to kill" by classifying his organization as a
hate group. The SPLC stood by that designation, saying the FRC also had
spread false propaganda about gays.

Other conservative and right religious right groups and spokespeople also got into the act of attacking SPLC with embarrassing results. On a youtube video, Janet Porter of Faith2Action falsely claimed that SPLC also named Concerned Women for America as a hate group, published the address of CWA's president, and encouraged people to "pay her a visit."

In regards to its confrontation with Dees, CNS News attempted to make it seem that Dees was flustered, however it appears to me that Dees did well for himself when the new group asked about SPLC's "hate map":

CNSNews.com questioned Dees about the Hate Map when he was in Washington, D.C., last week, asking whether his group has ever considered removing the FRC since the revelation from Corkins.

“Well, first of all, having a group on our Hate Map doesn’t cause anybody to attack them anymore than they attacked us for one thing or another,” Dees said. “This group that says gay people—statements attributed to their people said that gay people caused the Holocaust.

Demonstrably false things they say about gay people.
“It’s not on our Hate Map because they’re against gay people—and many, the Catholic Church is against people who are gay, so as others—it’s because of the demonstrably false things they say about people that are just total lies that demean gay people, they cause people to attack gay people,” he said.

Part of the claim against SPLC lies with a video posted by FRC months after the shooting which showed Corkins talking to the police afterwards. SPLC had earlier addressed this video:

The centerpiece . . . is a video published by the Family Research Council
(FRC) last week that shows a man who wounded a security guard at its
headquarters telling investigators that he got the FRC’s name from the
SPLC list of hate groups as it appears on our website. That is
apparently true, although it is false, as some on the religious right
have claimed, that the shooter, Floyd Lee Corkins, found the street
address of FRC on our website before carrying out the Aug. 15, 2012,
attack. In fact, we never publish addresses of the groups we criticize.

As you can tell, we are fast coming on the anniversary of the FRC shooting, which means we can expect FRC and other conservative and religious right groups to raise as much fuss about it as possible. However, what FRC will most likely NOT do - just like CNS News didn't do in its article - is to address the claims made by SPLC regarding the negative propaganda said about lgbts by the Family Research Council and other religious right groups.

Corkins' attempt to carry out an attack on FRC headquarters was justifiably condemned by those on the left and right of the political spectrum. But let's be clear about something. No matter how many times FRC blames SPLC for the near tragedy at its headquarters, It is a lie.

And it is a lie which FRC will continue to exploit in order to NOT address the false claims it makes about the lgbt community.

Alliance Defending Freedom is asking the California Supreme Court to require the state's county clerks to continue enforcing Proposition 8. ADF asserts that the recent ruling on Prop. 8 by the U.S. Supreme Court did not address the measure's constitutionality, which means a judge’s 2010 injunction does not apply statewide.
(ADF)

"Public officials should enforce the marriage amendment because they are not bound by the district court's injunction,” says ADF senior counsel Austin Nimocks.

The group responded to the state's attorney general and officials who say Proposition 8 should not be enforced.
California's governor and attorney general have mandated all county clerks in the state to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples.

“The U.S. Supreme Court did not rule on the constitutionality of Proposition 8 and the district court's injunction does not apply statewide,” Nimocks tells OneNewsNow. “Therefore, county clerks in California should abide by the state constitution and Proposition 8."

Nimocks is correct in one respect. The Supreme Court did not rule on the constitutionality of Prop 8. The court ruled that the proponents had no standing to challenge the ruling of U.S. District Chief Justice Vaughn Walker, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who all ruled that Prop 8 was unconstitutional.

All in all, it comes down to the same thing - those who support Prop 8 lost in the courts. The law is no longer valid and they really need to stop all of these hijinks because they are making complete fools of themselves.

About Me

Alvin McEwen is 46-year-old African-American gay man who resides in Columbia, SC.
McEwen's blog, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, and writings have been mentioned by Americablog.com, Goodasyou.org, People for the American Way, PageOneQ.com, The Washington Post, Raw Story, The Advocate, Media Matters for America, Crooksandliars.com, Thinkprogress.org, Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, Melissa Harris-Perry, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Washington Blade, and Foxnews.com.
In addition, he is also a past contributor to Pam's House Blend,Justice For All, LGBTQ Nation, and Alternet.org. He is a present contributor to the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post,
He is the 2007 recipient of the Harriet Daniels Hancock Volunteer of the Year Award and the 2010 recipient of the Order of the Pink Palmetto from the SC Pride Movement as well as the 2009 recipient of the Audre Lorde/James Baldwin Civil Rights Activist Award from SC Black Pride. In addition, he is a three-time nominee of the Ed Madden Media Advocacy Award from SC Pride.